Red Icon by Sam Eastland Page B

father did not make this knife for any priest!’
    *
     
    Following the guard who was on duty at the Okhrana holding cells, Pekkala made his way down a long corridor to a room that had been set aside for interrogations.
    There was total silence in the corridor, which was lined with steel doors, each one with a deadbolt and a small opening, covered by a sliding metal plate, through which food was delivered twice a day in metal bowls made of metal so soft that the bowls could be folded in half with a man’s bare hands. No cutlery was provided, so the prisoners ate with their fingers. Once a week, if inmates were held that long at headquarters before being transferred to one of the larger prisons in the city, each man would put his head through the opening. In this uncomfortable position, he would wait to be shaved by the prison barber, a sombre, thoughtful man named Budny who, in spite of these harsh surroundings, was a gentle and accomplished practitioner of his trade.
    Arriving at the interrogation cell, the guard slid back a deadbolt and pushed the door open with his other hand.
    ‘I might be a while,’ whispered Pekkala.
    The guard nodded and set off down the corridor towards the guardroom, which was furnished with an assortment of couches with threadbare upholstery, wing-backed chairs and even a rocker, all scrounged by the industrious Vassileyev from the many noble patrons of his service. Unaware that Pekkala was still watching from the doorway of the cell, the guard held his arms out to the side, as if gliding through the sky like an albatross, fingertips brushing past the doors.
    Pekkala stepped into the room and closed the door.
    The interrogation cell contained no windows, only an air vent in the ceiling. A single lamp, hooded by a metal shade, hung over a table in the centre of the room. There were two chairs, one on either side of the table. Otherwise, the room was completely empty, and the dark grey walls, as grim as thunderclouds, combined with the cone of light above the table to give the impression of a raft floating in the middle of a stormy sea.
    The priest had already been brought in. One of his legs had been shackled to a ring anchored in the floor beside the chair, and his hands were fastened with a set of heavy cuffs. He was a small man in his late thirties, with thinning hair and a sallow, puffy complexion. He wore the simple black robe of an Orthodox priest, which fastened down the left side of his body with hidden hooks, rather than buttons. Those being held at Okhrana headquarters were not issued the coarse grey-and-black-striped clothing of convicts. That would come later, for those who moved on into the long-term prison system.
    The first thing Pekkala did was to fetch a small key from his pocket, lean across the table and unfasten the cuffs. With a heavy rattle, they slipped from the man’s wrists on to the table and lay there like a pair of iron crab claws. Without undoing the chain which shackled the priest’s right leg to the floor, Pekkala took his seat.
    The prisoner watched with great curiosity as Pekkala removed a small notebook from the chest pocket of his waistcoat, and then a black fountain pen with a gold clip. He unscrewed the cap, revealing the long and graceful nib, pushed the cap on to the end of the pen and scribbled the day’s date at the top of a page in his notebook. Only then did he raise his head and look the prisoner in the eye. ‘What is your name?’ asked Pekkala.
    ‘Detlev,’ replied the man. ‘Alexander Nikolaevich Detlev.’
    Pekkala wrote it down, the pen rustling across the page. ‘Father Detlev, I understand that you have confessed to stealing the icon known as The Shepherd from the house of Grigori Rasputin.’
    ‘Yes,’ he answered readily.
    ‘And where is the icon now?’ asked Pekkala.
    ‘It has been destroyed,’ Detlev said, matter-of-factly.
    Pekkala looked up sharply from his notebook. ‘Destroyed?’
    ‘That’s what I said.’
    ‘And who